Behind any human institution there stand a few men—perhaps only one man—who direct its movement, protect its interests, or serve as its mouthpiece. This applies to nations. If we wish to know for what a nation stands and what are its ideals and by what means it seeks to realise them, we shall do well to know something of the men who lead its people or express their feelings.

o hatred or passion. In an insular people for whom peace was an ideal, neighbourliness a sacred duty, and the psychology of foreign nations a sealed book, this way of reading the bearings of the new situation and adjusting them to the nation's requirements was natural and fateful.

To the few private individuals who had the advantage of experience and were gifted with political vision the crisis presented itself under a different aspect. Some of them had foreseen and foretold the war, basing their forecast on the obvious policy of the German Government and on the overt strivings of the German nation. They had depicted that nation as intellectual and enterprising, abundantly equipped with all the requisites for an exhausting contest, fired with enthusiasm for a single idea--the subjugation of the world--and devoid of ethical scruple. And in the clarion's blast which suddenly resounded on the pacific air they recognized the trump of doom for Teuton Kultur or European civilization, and proclaimed the utter